Clocks Can Be Reset

Could it be that the assurances of the New York Times that Israel will not pre-emptively strike Iran's nuclear weapons program facilities before President Bush rides off into the sunset next Tuesday have been typical NYT BS?  Newsmax's Jim Meyers thinks so:

Informed sources in Washington tell Newsmax that Israel indeed will launch a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities soon – possibly in just days as President George W. Bush prepares to leave office.

The reason: The time clock has begun to run out. Iran is close to acquiring a nuclear device under the control of its radical president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said in June that Iran would have a nuclear weapon in as little as six months.

That six-month period has passed.

Of course, we have no idea of the identities or credibility of Meyers' "informed sources" or how "informed" they really are.  But then we DO have a fairly decent idea of the credibility and ideological biases of the Times, and that gives Meyers and Newsmax a benefit of the doubt from the git-go equivalent to Britney Speares' advantage over the late Mother Teresa in the skankiness department.

That thought did cross my mind as I was composing that earlier post on this dreary topic.  Unfortunately, the unwillingness of anybody in the West, including the Israelis, to confront Iranian nuclear ambitions head-on before they can be realized, with apocalyptic results, has been so long established over the past several years that even the NYT crowing triumphantly about the Bushies pulling back on a leash the pathetic Olmert regime in Jerusalem was never really straining at was nevertheless all too believable.  It fit the existing baseline of recent history.

So what do Meyers' "informed sources" know that nobody else does?  Nobody knows, other, presumeably, than Meyers himself.  But here, for the offering, are the recent events that auger in their favor:

Last year one hundred Israeli jets took part in an exercise over the eastern Mediterranean that was interpreted as a dress rehearsal for a possible attack on Iran.

And on September 6 Israel launched an air attack against a site in Syria believed to be a nuclear-related facility containing material delivered by North Korea.

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton predicted that Israel would stage a raid against Iran's nuclear facilities if Barack Obama won the presidential election.

Bolton stated that he believed the Israeli attack would take place sometime between the day after Obama's win and his inauguration on January 20.

In an interview with FOX News, Bolton reasoned that Israel wouldn’t be able to hold off a strike on Iran any longer than that given Obama’s more conciliatory approach to Iran.

The Israeli government “would have to make a judgment whether to [strike] during the remainder of President Bush’s term in office or wait for his successor,” Bolton added.

First off, obviously, striking a target in next-door Syria is a far less daunting proposition than attacking Iranian targets nearly a thousand miles away through the latest Russian-built air defense system without the bunker-buster warheads necessary to ensure their destruction.  But, unlike Meyers, given those daunting hurdles, I think the repurcussions of this hypothetical strike are not unclear at all.

If the IAF can't carry out this strike without a reasonable chance of success, they, and we, will be incurring the wrath of the mullahgarchy and its Syrian, Hezbo, and Hamas puppets without having removed Tehran's burgeoning nuclear capabilities.  If even the Bushkins denied the Jews the means to infict critical damage on Iranian nuclear facilities, one would have to question the efficacy of proceeding with the attack anyway.

And that leaves aside the overpowering "dovishness" of the current Israeli Kaditha regime, which is currently, and futilely, squandering still more IDF resources on another half-hearted incursion into the Gaza Strip to try and show the disgruntled Israeli electorate in advance of next month's national elections that they've still got as long a penis as ANY Likudnik.  If the Olmert-Livni-Barak axis isn't capable of seriously solving its self-inflicted Hamas problem, what in the name of all that's kosher convinces Meyers and his "informed sources" that they'd be willing or able to "go Osirik" on the mullahs?

And ponder this thought over this next, last week of American freedom: what will President Hussein do to the Jews if they embroil him in a war with Iran he doesn't want before he's even been able to display his Jemimah glory for all the assembled inaugural worshippers (and the al Qaeda operatives trying to kill them all, and him)?  The Olmert regime is far more sympatico with Red Barry than it ever was with Dubya, in any case.  Even if they weren't pacifists, they wouldn't want to piss off B.O. for a mission even his predecessor denied them the means to pull off.

Maybe I'll be wrong about this.  Maybe the New York Times is just dispensing enemy propaganda, as usual, and Meyers' "informed sources" are not risibly mislabeled.  Heaven knows I'd like to believe that SOMEbody will at least buy us some additional time in which to "disarm" the mullahgarchy.

But it's not the way to bet.

If, you know, any of us had any money left to wager.